Regarding West, the most credible source is Louisiana high school defensive tackle Gerron Borne, who dropped West’s name in an interview with scout.com.

“I’m going to New Mexico (on a recruiting visit) on January 27th,” Borne told Scout’s Mike Coppage. “They hired Ron West from Illinois as their defensive coordinator. Coach West said that with the defense they run — I can make a major impact.”

Two college football websites, footballscoop.com and coachingsearchticker.com, citing anonymous sources, also say West is UNM’s new defensive coordinator.

West is a 30-year college coaching veteran, having worked at East Carolina, North Texas, Texas Tech, Louisiana-Lafayette, Baylor, Clemson and Tulsa as well as at Illinois. He was the outside linebackers coach on Ron Zook’s staff with the Illini. Zook was fired at the end of the 2011 season.

West was a defensive coordinator at Louisiana-Lafayette and a co-defensive coordinator at Tulsa.

Regarding McDaniel, the Tulsa newspaper did not specify what position on Davie’s staff the former Tulsa assistant would take. But it’s likely he’ll coach the defensive line. Last week, former Louisiana-Lafayette assistant Kevin Fouquier accepted the defensive-line job but later changed his mind.

SMITH, TOO: DeAndre Smith, another former Illinois assistant, is UNM’s new running-backs coach. Smith was inadvertently left off a list of Davie coaching hires that was published in Sunday’s Journal.

Davie has not announced any assistant-coaching hires, preferring to wait until the entire staff is assembled. But the following hires have been confirmed by multiple sources:

Ben Hilgart, former head sports-performance coach at Arizona State, is Davie’s strength-and-conditioning coach. Brian DeSpain, most recently a football operations and recruiting assistant at Texas A&M, is UNM’s new director of football operations.
— This article appeared on page D1 of the Albuquerque Journal